Opinion: Why plastic bags should be banned

A seagull picks a plastic bag on the seashore at Caleta Portales beach in Valparaiso, Chile on July 17, 2018.
The international community has recently become far more sensitive to the environmental problems created in particular by single-use plastics. Chile has been one of the countries leading the way in Latin America against the use of plastic bags. In 2014 the government of Michelle Bachelet banned them in Chilean Patagonia and last year extended that to coastal areas, but now its days are numbered by law and a cultural change is needed.
/ AFP PHOTO / CLAUDIO REYESCLAUDIO REYES/AFP/Getty Images ORIG FILE ID: AFP_17Z4XY(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

On Sept. 24, Enquirer contributor Gil Spencer wrote about why plastic bags are not a threat to the environment. We can give you at least 20 reasons (check out "Ban Plastic Bags" online) why plastic bags are harmful to both the environment and human health. Among the reasons plastic bags should be banned are:

Plastic bags pollute our land and water. Being lightweight they blow long distances littering our landscape, floating along our waterways and eventually reaching the oceans.

Plastic bags are made made from non renewable fossil fuels (petroleum and natural gas) and are energy intensive to produce. Through their extraction and production, they create greenhouse gases, which contribute to global climate change.

Plastic Bags never break down. They are eaten by wildlife and marine life like fish and shrimp causing congestion in their throat and often death. Fish eat small plastic particles and when fish are consumed by humans the PCBs from the plastic eaten by fish /shrimp accumulate in the human body. PCBs are known to be hormone disrupters.

Plastic bags are costly. While one paper grocery bag equals the cost of 5 plastic bags, it takes 5-8 plastic bags to fill the equivalent of one paper bag. And if a cloth bag is used, it can be used many more times than a single use plastic bag.

Plastic bags have many external costs beside the cost of manufacturing and buying. The cost of plastic bag cleanup is about 17 cents per bag, and on average, each taxpayer ends up paying about $88 per year just on plastic bag waste. Other costs include the true environmental cost of resource extraction and depletion, quality of life loss, economic loss from littering, and wildlife loss.

Plastic bags do not readily end up in landfills as Spencer suggests as a solution to the problems plastic bags create. Reality demonstrates that they blow about littering the landscape and waterways. Already plastics have accumulated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which is known as the "Pacific Garbage Patch." This conglomerate of plastic is greater than the size of Texas. Even if plastic bags could be placed in a “proper landfill”, landfills themselves are an environmental liability emitting greenhouse gases like methane. Also to be economical landfills are located near urban areas and who wants to live next to a landfill!

When we ban plastic bags, we enhance awareness about the importance of environmental protection. It helps to spread awareness about climate change and global warming and to support green industries.

A customer carries their items from Kroger to their car in plastic bags in Newport, Ky., on Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2018. (Photo: Albert Cesare / The Enquirer, )

To date, more than 40 countries and municipalities around the world have instituted plastic bag bans, so why not Cincinnati? If plastic bags are to provide a convenience, then the customer should be required to pay for this convenience. In Ireland, where this fee was instituted in 2002, plastic bag usage has been decreased by about 90 percent. If people are too poor to acquire cloth bags, either by gift or purchase, the default should be a return to the brown grocery bag which holds 5-8 times a plastic bag, is biodegradable and which was used by all before 1960.

Pinky Kocoshis is co-president of the League of Women Voters of Greater Cincinnati and chair of its Natural Resource Committee.